Year || 503 Season || Fall Temp || 35℉ (℃) - 69℉ (℃) Weather || The iron grip of Summer has slowly faded into the gentler Fall embrace. The morning dew frosts over in the early morning hours and melts by the time the sun hits high in the sky. Many of the trees have traded their lush, vivid green for a more suitable array of red and orange hues. But don't blink, for Winter's cold embrace is fast upon Fall's heels.

"Are there lines she's crossing? Should she toe them or touch them with a pole and stay away wholly? But to avoid such a storm he offers, such a taste of life; to withhold herself from the chance to taste starlight, to love satin and silk and swallow pomegranate seeds not yet offered... She should be stronger." — Moira in Small as a wish in a well

A flash of blue caught his eye, Ipomoea turning just in time to see the blue-and-black songbird rushing into the sky. His bonded flew with such a reckless abandon that Po could feel his own heart start to speed up within his chest, thump-thump-thumping in time with Odet’s wings. His feathers flexed at his ankles - reaching, grasping, straining to fly the way the songbird could.

But Po was a horse with wings hardly bigger than Odet’s; flight would never be his.

Instead he let himself pause and watch his bonded, a lazy smile crooked on his lips. He could feel Odet’s joy through their connection, the confident and effortless ease by which he flew. Seeing the world from above through his bonded’s eyes, experiencing it through his thoughts and emotions… that could be enough for Po. It had to be.

After a moment, he finally tore his gaze from the sky and returned it to the roughened landscape unfolding before him. Denocte looked so very different now than the last time he had been here: the ground was muddy and torn, scattered trees burnt to a crisp and even more ripped up by their roots. ’It looks like a war zone,’ he couldn’t help but think, ’I wonder what terrors they had to face…’

Delumine, too, had seen their own share of disasters - the smoke still clogged his lungs, the burnt trees and meadows filled his dreams. But he hadn’t been able to imagine Denocte looking like this; over the many miles he’d covered, he’d kept envisioning the wildflower meadows and the mirror-like lake and the jubilant city streets. And what he found in its stead seemed sorely out of place.

“Of course, it may just be the rain,” he mused aloud to himself. It had rained a good part of his journey, all through the Bellum Steppe and Arma Mountains. The whole time he had prayed the winds would shift and bring the storm clouds north to his own capitol, but whether or not the gods had answered he couldn’t know.

Nor could he fault Odet’s enthusiasm. For days the bird had been nestled in his hair, trying to stay as dry as possible and failing… it must feel good indeed to stretch his wings again.

The road continued to widen the closer he got to the Night Court’s capitol, though Po was sure to stay well off to the side where the grass provided better footing than the rutted and hole-pocked street. With every rumble of thunder, he found himself quickening his stride, the better to bring Denocte into view as soon as possible. By the end, he hardly paid any mind to his surroundings, focusing instead on the buildings growing taller and taller. And when the brown-and-white splashed Regent finally stepped up to the gates, his bonded flit down upon his withers once more. Odet strode carefully up his neck to weave a few fresh flowers into his mane (for Po had to abandon his blossom crown after the rains had drenched it).

And so it was with a smile and a newly-woven braid that Ipomoea entered the Night Court capitol.

It took him longer than expected to weave his way through the sprawling city streets - and before he knew it, he was horribly turned around. The Dawn Court Regent stopped at a split in the road, turning his head first one way, then another, debating which route to take. Shaking his head, he turned to address the nearest equine. “Excuse me, miss, but could you mayhaps point me towards the castle? I’m afraid I might be lost.”

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

This deep into the the court it's easy to forget that outside the rain still falls in patches, cold enough to turn to ice and bruise. It's easier to forget that the water once splashed in bursts of brine and rage against the buildings looming like towers around her. And in a warm spot of sunlight, with her eyes pressed tightly shut, it's hard to remember that she's queen of a broken city full of people who know how to break as much as they know how to dream.

Around her the streets are both alive and muted. Sounds of rebuilding and sounds of hopeful sorrow rise and fall in a chorus of survival. She opens and closes her eyes as it washes over her in a rain that doesn't feel like ice and suffering. This is the crown Isra wears. Her soul is too dark and stained for flowers but she wears her sadness like gold and her dream like a cloak made of satin and moonlight.

She sways to the sounds of her people and smiles when children beg her to run with them through the streets and play a game she never learned as a child. A memory flares then and her vision seems blacker when she blinks and her blood feels a little colder when she leaps into a canters to join the youth. As she runs she hopes that the movement will bring back the embers of her fire.

They run like wild things through the streets.

Their laughter sounds like a flock of sparrows singing instead of horses and their hooves sound like glass bells when they run on stone streets that survived the sea. They run until their lungs are heavy and her longer strides start to overtake the children with little effort. Isra is damp with sweat and her bones feel weary with something other than sorrow.

She's never been happier, never more content to blink and see life instead of dirt and bones. Never has she been happier to be a unicorn and not a slave, one that's now so very far from the sea. And so she feels like a star, ablaze with joy as she sends the children to the castle to eat whatever the kitchens are preparing, to fill their bellies to bursting.

The stallion finds her while she's still watching their distant shadows with something like love and something like avarice. It's in her gaze, a tangle of blue bright enough and deep enough to drown. There's a world in her eyes and it seems right that the broken city reflects in them when she turns to greet him. “Of course.” She says as she blinks to tuck away that dark depth of her gaze.

It's a gentler Isra that looks at him then, a story-teller who sometimes dreams of being more than just a 'teller' of legends and heroes and villains. “I could take you if you like.” She offers and her horn sighs when she moves close enough to him that her tail trails inside his shadow.

Perhaps that horn even says, like the cover of a book once said, follow me, follow me and it might feel like it's more than just a castle she could lead him towards.

It's always been the people that made Ipomoea enjoy traveling so much. That, as well as the sites, and the different terrains, and the excitement of not knowing where he was going, and the way he could always find something new and wondrous to marvel at - but especially the people. Their lives and their stories, their hopes and aspirations, their disappointments and their pain. He would never tire of meeting someone new, of puzzling out their similarities and differences. It's why he's more prone to ask a stranger for directions than to consult a map.

There is something about the woman's eyes when she turns to greet him, and the way she seems to look past his flesh and bones to peer down into his very soul. It's a queer feeling, but not altogether unpleasant; there's wisdom in those eyes, a gentleness and a wildness mixed together - and also a sadness. Her's are the kind of eyes that don't just look: they see. They know, and they understand. When he catches her gazing out across the market square, he can't help but think she's looking upon something entirely different, as if he and she were seeing two different versions of the same world.

And Ipomoea can't help but wonder if there's anything those blue eyes miss; could they see past lies and facades to expose the truth underneath? A shiver runs down his spine, and he thinks she could, if she tried. Ipomoea has nothing to hide - dishonesty simply isn't in his nature - but still he feels vulnerable beneath her gaze.

"Of course," she tells him, and "I could take you if you like," but her body sings a different tune than her voice. She beckons to him not with her words, but with her eyes and her steps and her horn, and it seems to Po that that is the song he should be singing along to.

So when she steps forward her finds himself matching her step for step, thus bringing their bodies closer. His smile is one of gratefulness - though he is unsure yet whether he should be thanking her for her help, or perhaps for something more. But he smiles nonetheless, and offers her his should to walk alongside each other.

"Lead the way."

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

They walk together and the Court unfolds before them like a hundred bits of silk might unfold before a design. Banners snap in the cool wind and Isra thinks of how loud butterfly wings might sound to flowers. Families walk across the stones and their hooves sound like song, keys made of ivory and bells made of laughter. Sadness and joy thrives around them in a strange but beautiful tangle that feels for a moment exactly how Isra has always imagined life should feel.

She's just learning, like a child might, how life might feel. Isra is just understanding how to bend her knees and walk when her soul stumbles and sobs. It still feels strange to look at death, to taste it in the darkness on her tears when they run deep enough to drown and want only to breathe.

She wants to live even though it feels strange to have such a simple thing feel like a want instead of a need.

Isra breathes as a burst of silence breaks up all the sound like a bomb. And in that silence she can only taste a hint of flowers and the musk of adventure and rain. Part of her wants to ask what stories he smells of, what flowers make up the crown upon his brow for she has no other name for them but beautiful. (But ask her what different tips of leather and steel feel like inside skin and she will tell you a story of each.) Instead she only echoes his smile and it seems weaker for the paleness of it compared to all his, all his-- brightness.

And when she breaks up the silence before their surroundings might she pushes her shoulder closer to his with each word and ring of their hooves. “What brings you here?” Her question echoes weaker than the silence like a bit of salt left to blend in with the snow. To her it feels softer than the echo of his hooves on the pathways dusted with gems and cracked stones.

The part of her that wants to live craves for a moment to be louder than both the silence and the night and the everything that might ever be. But she's still the queen that blends too easily with the shadows to shine and seems too dark beneath the sun to be lovely.

The sun looks like fire above their heads, brighter for the whiteness of the winter and the darkness of the destruction. Her eyes sting when she looks up and she welcomes the burn to stop the words burning at her lips from coming.

As they walk, the memories come trickling back in like the water melting from an icicle, each drip signaled a remembrance, the cobblestoned street with all its turns and nooks and wonders impressing the past back upon his mind. ’I bought perfume from a merchant’s stall down that street,’ his mind whispers to him, ’and spices down there.’ He had met a woman out in the prairie surrounding the capitol - or perhaps reunited was a better word for it, for he had met Grainne as a child.

He had walked the courtyard with Reichenbach, was shown the wonders of the moon symbol and carvings by their previous Emissary. He had walked with Messalina to vitreus lake where they had admired the flowers like they had admired the paintings in the castle, had shared secrets like pleasantries (not that Po had many secrets to keep, but he had bared his few all the same.) Ipomoea breathes in deeply the smell of rain and flowers and nostalgia, and when he looks to the sky he swears he can see faces and stories painted in the clouds. The wind changes them at will, every sigh shaping the features into someone new, another reminder of times already past.

A smile, small and wistful, brightens his features.

It’s comfortable, walking beside the bay mare. Even without talking, they lapse into an easy silence broken only by the sound of their hoofbeats and the noisy court life around them. Usually so talkative and animated, Ipomoea is content to be an observer.

”What brings you here?” Her shoulder bumps against his, and one cerise shines at her from the side.

He takes a second to savor his response, letting the words run like lazy water through his mind before he speaks them. At first, only the sound of his hooves ringing against the gem-encrusted streets answers her question.

“It’s been a long time since I last visited Denocte.”’Before the gates closed,’ he might have said, but he doesn’t. ’Before the gods, before the fires started or the thunderbirds came,’ he thinks, but this too he keeps unspoken. “I thought it was past time I came back.” He makes it sound like he’s coming home - for Denocte had a way of making a wanderlust orphan feel welcomed.

“Besides, I wanted to meet the new queen everyone has been talking about.” He didn’t know - couldn’t know. Isra’s name was one he had not heard until recently, and her face was still one unfamiliar.

Or so he thought. Life always had been full of surprises, ones he was determined to welcome in his stride.

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m right at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

Isra with ocean lungs
' "I have come for the girl in the window," he said, and his eyes filled with tears '

Her throat feels like a long, stretched out thing. The space between her lungs and between her tongue feels like a chasm . Each breath pools in her throat, gathers and gathers and gathers until the pool becomes an ocean, a deep dark place where words are flotsam and waves and questions miles and miles of sand. All her thoughts, her questions, all of her voice drowns in her throat when he looks at her home and smiles as if he's found treasure, wonder and joy.

Isra wishes she could always feel like that, like the smile upon his face and nothing like the tightness of her own smile that tries bravely to echo the lightness of his. It's feels almost impossible to meet his gaze and smile as if the words that rise like lava (thick and slow and hot) don't matter to her any more than the sun matters to the moon. “Does it seem the same?” She whispers, swallowing down in her throat (that still feels too long and too deep) all the other questions she wants to ask. The words of gates and brine and char drown in that sea of her lungs and they sink like stones.

The silence feels a little colder now when she hides in it again. But the streets feel brighter when the castle looms boldly before them on the path. Each stone on the archway catches the light and Isra wonder if he can see the constellation lines between those pricks of light. She wonders if he can taste the rust and brine on the doors, and if tastes like a mystery or like a eulogy.

Does he see the beauty or the decay, the way it all seems both tainted and blessed by the remnants of the sea?

Her steps are almost too quick when she steps upon that first pearl-dusted step to those star-map and gemstone doors. Isra wonders if she's given herself away, if that glint of worry and pride and fear are visible the deepness of her gaze. “And what do they say,” Her words are breathy, weary sighs when she turns to him, as if she has only suddenly realized how important his answer is. “of our queen where you come from?”Almost belatedly does she realize she's asked two questions instead of one in a strange way that drips with anything but charm and grace.

And instead of lifting her head up boldly like a queen (until the doors arch above her horn like a halo), Isra only watches him in a way that's both shy and intent. Air stutters in her lungs, waiting for him to say, they know the queen is no unicorn, she is nothing more than a corpse floating on the bottom of a sea and we know, we know, we know.

Part of her waits for him to tell her that she's really dead, that Denocte is just a dream.

”Does it seem the same?” Such an innocent question - but oh, how it makes the rose-colored boy’s heart ache. He can’t stop the memories that flood his mind, the nostalgia that makes him dizzy, the wave of emotion that rises suddenly in his soul. His throat feels so tight - for a moment he doesn’t dare speak, for he can hardly breathe.

He wishes he could lead her into his memories, to show her how different everything feels despite how familiar everything looks.

“It is, and it also is not.”

He did not notice how quiet his voice had become; the world has shrunk to encompass just him and the dark-haired girl walking beside him, and they are observing another world that tumbles along without them. If he speaks too loudly, if he moves too quickly, he risks interrupting it all.

Even his footsteps seem light and too-quiet, like he’s not really there, but only a ghost, trapped in the memory of this place.

“Some say she’s a storyteller,” he tells her, his voice soft. “Others say she’s only a story herself. And still others say she creates the stories she tells, creating wonderful things from nothing.” He’s a step behind her, allowing her to take the first step up to those gilded doors.

And as she does, he watches her; his violently-bright eyes nearly hidden beneath long lashes. And it’s as if for the first time on their walk, he’s really seeing her, and seeing who she is. From her dark, spiraling horn rising proudly from her brow to the dusting of scales hiding along the curve of her belly.

His words are slow, almost hesitant. But with each one, it gets a little easier, and he grows a little more confident. The secret is becoming more clear in his mind - and he realizes that he’s answering his own question.

“I’ve heard tales that she’s a mermaid.” He looks pointedly to the scales, a glance that lingers just a moment too long before he looks away. “Or that she used to be, and is no more.”

He takes his first step, then another, and another; soon, he’s standing beside her again, and they’re in front of the palace but they don’t enter, not yet.

Already he knows that this is not where they part; they will pass through the doors together, and inside it will be the same as the last time he was here, but also not.

“They say that she looks like you.” He whispers. “And that her name is Isra.”

And even the name sounds right as it rolls off his tongue; like it was meant for her, and meant for Denocte.

He smiles a small, shy smile, and nods to the door.

"Shall we, Your Grace?"

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m right at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy

@Isra ! going to end this here
i am so sorry for how long this thread has taken, the next will be much faster”here am i!“

Isra without mystery
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul"

Isra, with each step, is becoming more and more unsure about how she fits in her own skin. She wonders if he can see it, the way her form seems like nothing more than a memory of skin and bone. It feels like there is ink running through her instead of blood. Ink that might wash away in tears or a gentle summer storm.

She cannot help but look at him and the soft, confidence blooming in him like an orchid given sunlight and love. Oh, she's jealous then, envious of that way that walking seems easy for him. Has she ever walked with confidence making bold all the lines of her shadows?

He discovers her then, unwrapping the secrets of her that are quickly becoming less and less sacred. She misses her cobweb darkness and her silence then. If his smile was dimmer, if she didn't need to be a queen, she would have turned then and dissolved into the crowd. She is not ready to share what little mystery she has left.

But running isn't for her anymore, as much as she wants it to be. So she smiles, forces a laugh that sounds like a bell hanging between her teeth. “Clever.” She swallows and blinks and tell herself to be brave, be brave because this is her home and he the stranger. This is the first time she's ever lead anyone into the marble and gemstone doors of her home. Does he see how lovely they are, can he see the bits of soot and old dragon, claw marks in the stone?

Can he feel in the air how everything seems sweeter, as hopeful as flowers when the winter starts to die? Isra wants to be spring, she wants to wear flower as easily as the stallion does. She wants to be a story, her story. She wants to be remade in ink that will never run or age.

Isra wants to be a good queen for her people.

“Welome then, to my home, clever stallion.” Her steps ring like her laughter as the doors part before her with an old groan. “It seems we have much to talk about.” The darkness broken up by candlelight devours her as she walks into her castle, waiting for him to follow.

He doesn’t see the way nervousness clings to her like a second skin, how her smile seems less and less sure of herself. He’s too caught up in unraveling the riddle, and the way his heart races and skips in his chest.

There’s something about Denocte that brings out a new sense of excitement within him, wholly different from the easy comfort he finds back in Delumine.

Clever, she calls him, and his smile is shy but proud. “It’s a pleasure to be here,” he replies in earnest, and together they walk to the great doors. ”A lot to discuss indeed.” Already his mind is painting a picture from memory of what it was like the last time he walked these halls, when a Crow was a King and the gypsy smoke was thick with spice. But this Isra is not Reichenbach, and there’s a mystery to be had behind those doors. He wonders if it’s like the rest of Denocte: some things still the same, other things not-quite what they were.

There was only one way to find out.

The doors part with a groan, and darkness greets them, but he’s unafraid. It’s the Court of Dreams, after all, and it’s only ever greeted him with welcome arms before. Willingly, he steps into the night behind her.

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m right at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you